We at Seattle Weekly have never upgraded to Windows Vista, and I am typing this on an XP-equipped old PC that dates to the Clinton administration. But maybe I’m lucky, according to this Gizmodo tell-all feature about the new Windows 7, which has been made available to some beta testers. Take, for example, the old Windows taskbar that sits at the bottom of your screen. Now (pictured above) it’s cool and translucent, not like what I call the “bricks” in a row on my monitor. Which reminds me of an enduring conundrum that I hope Windows 7 will solve. Whenever XP crashes out of a program (several times a day) the bricks–sorry, I mean the little taskbar icons–reverse their order from left to right. How is this helpful? In terms of visual reference, it’s like switching from English to Japanese. But maybe the beta testers will solve that one.When is the Windows 7 ship date? January 2010 seems to be the industry consensus. Though I doubt I’ll have a new PC by then.